LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3!

Aims and Scope: Since 1995, the NLDB conference, with high impact factor, has aimed at bringing together researchers, industrials and potential users interested in various applications of Natural Language in the Web and database driven information systems area. It has contributed to many areas such as: improving the development process from the viewpoints of the developers (e.g., the process of requirements engineering, conceptual modeling, validation, etc.) the usability of applications (e.g., natural language query interfaces, retrieval, semantic web, etc.) knowledge extraction and dissemination (e.g., text mining, knowledge discovery, etc.). To underline these inspiring connections, NLDB 2009 will take place from June 23 to June 26 in Saarbruecken, Germany.

Topics of Interest: NLDB 2009 invites researchers to submit papers on recent, unpublished research on all aspects of Natural Language processing and management related to information systems. The Program Committee also encourages people from the industry to submit papers reporting on industrial projects. Contributions are welcome in, but not limited, from the following topics:

Submission Guidelines: Authors should submit manuscripts in Portable Document Format (PDF). Papers should not exceed 12 pages. The Proceedings of NLDB 2009 will be published in the LNCS-series at Springer Verlag . The authors should follow the LNCS format (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). Please also note: The best papers will be selected after the conference and an extended version of these papers will be published in the Data and Knowledge Journal as a special issue.

The mfm is the UK's annual phonology conference, with an international set of organisers. It is held in late May every year in Manchester.

Call for Papers

The meeting has become a key conference for phonologists from all corners of the world, where anyone who declares themselves to be interested in phonology can submit an abstract on anything phonological in any phonological framework. In an informal atmosphere, we discuss a broad range of topics, including the phonological description of a wide variety of languages, issues in phonological theory, aspects of phonological acquisition and implications of phonological change.

Special session: 'The History of Phonological Theory', featuring invited speakers: - John Goldsmith (University of Chicago) - Morris Halle (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) - D. Robert Ladd (University of Edinburgh) - Tobias Scheer (University of Nice) [Professor Halle's paper will either be presented in person, or may be read by another]

- Abstracts should be no longer than one side of A4, with 2.5cm or one inch margins, single-spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12, and with normal character spacing.

- Your abstract should be anonymous. You will be asked to submit a version with your name and affiliation on it if your abstract is selected for presentation. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by members of the organising committee and advisory board.

- You should use one of these formats for your abstract: pdf, Word, or plain text. If you need to use a phonetic font in your abstract, either embed it in a pdf file, or use the Doulos SIL font

- Full papers will last around 25 minutes with around 5 minutes for questions, and there will be a high-profile poster session lasting one and a half hours. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to indicate whether you would prefer to present your work as an oral paper or a poster paper, or whether you would be prepared to present it in either form.

- If you need technical equipment for your talk you will need to let the organisers know if your abstract is selected for presentation. We will do our best to provide it, although this cannot be guaranteed.

- We aim to finalise the programme, and to contact abstract-senders by around the early April, and we will contact those who have sent abstracts as soon as the decisions have been made.

Further important details concerning abstract submission are available on the conference website - please make sure that you consult these before submitting an abstract: www.englang.ed.ac.uk/mfm/17mfm.html

Organising Committee: The first named is the convenor and main organiser - if you would like to attend or if you have any queries about the conference, please feel free to get in touch with me (patrick.honeyboneed.ac.uk). - Patrick Honeybone (Edinburgh) - Ricardo Bermudez-Otero (Manchester)